Shane Black is easily one of my favorite screenwriters working today. You could just pop in a copy of Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang to understand why, or you could read the below excerpt from his 2003 draft of The Nice Guys (written with Anthony Bagarozzi):

Healy (v.o.)Love... Grand isn't it..?(beat)Me? I was in love once. June Miller.

FLASH CUT TO: A NICE RESTAURANT

HEALY sits across a table from a knockout BLONDE. They stare into each other's eyes. A beat. Healy starts to say something. The blonde cuts him off:

BlondeJack... I slept with your father.

The guy at the next table does a spit take.

Sublime. And then, a few lines down, we get this pearl of wisdom from Healy: "Marriage is buying a house for someone you hate." Joe Hallenbeck couldn't have said it any better himself. God, I love this guy.

And you're definitely going to love The Nice Guys, which, according to Joel Silver (who knuckled under the fierce questioning of Frosty at Collider), is set to be Black's writing/directing follow-up to the magnificent Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. I'm not surprised. Black isn't one to let a good piece of material go to waste; he works too hard orchestrating the endless, Chandler-ian plot twists to give up on any of his scripts for good (Shadow Company excepted). And now that he's finally directing under the protection of Joel Silver (who owes a good chunk of his career to Black's imagination), these outlandishly entertaining screenplays are no longer subject to the bad idea factory. The only person who can fuck up Black's words now is Black himself.

I read The Nice Guys years ago while I was preparing to interview Black for Creative Screenwriting. Though considered the "lesser" of the writer's two comeback scripts (the other being L.A.P.I., which was rewritten into You'll Never Die in This Town Again and rechristened Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang), I thought it was vintage Black. It's another Odd Couple two-hander: Jackson Healy (muscle-for-hire, recovering alcoholic) and Holland March (sleazy private eye, practicing alcoholic) are improbably brought together when the daughter of a presidential candidate seemingly commits suicide. Problem is, the deceased girl's aunt is convinced she saw her niece alive and well after the highly publicized incident. Though March is convinced the woman is a flake (she's got coke bottle eyeglasses, so who knows what she saw?), he takes the case because he needs the money.

Of course, there really is a dopplegÃ¤nger, and, after a little digging, it begins to look like the presidential candidate might've done some shady shit with one of these girls. I won't spoil the inner workings of the plot, but it's a fast-paced head-spinner on the level of Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang; as with that film, the narrative threatens to spin out of control with each nutty contrivance, but, somehow, it all shakes out in the end.

In case you're wondering, there will be no Crop Report on The Nice Guys until I get my hands on a new draft of the script. That said, I think the 2003 pass was more than ready for production, which makes me wonder if they're scaling back the action (newsflash: Black goes riotously overboard with the set pieces).

KKBB is one of my favourite films. It's just total genius from start to finish, has great plotting, a cracking script, brilliant central performances from Downey and Kilmer and it's got MICHELLE MONAGHAN IN IT.

Funny Shane Black story. I saw him speak at the Austin Film Festival a few years back in a panel discussion (btw, a very approachable guy...totally down to earth). But someone asked him a question about being medically insured by the studio or something like that (I know...totally random fucking question). And Shane's response was:

"Well, they're always worried b/c of the number of pills I take. I have really bad OCD. I'm just lucky that I've managed to turn a horrible, crippling condition into a lucrative writing career."

Borys Kit wrote:Joel Silver, who produced both the Weapons movies and Bang Bang, is producing Nice Guys, which is said to have much of the trademarked Black dark comedy and smartypants dialogue.

Nice Guys, which Black wrote with Anthony Bagarozzi, was initially envisioned as a TV series but never got past the pilot stage. Silver and Black re-fitted it as a feature and have been packaging it in recent months.

The plot centers on a private detective and a beefcake who search for a missing porn star and uncover an underground ring of corruption.

Steve 'Frosty' Weintraub wrote:Before I run out of time with you, I’m very curious about Shane Black and Nice Guys. He is a master dialogue guy, just a master, what was it like getting to work with him?

SIMPKINS: Shane is awesome, I worked with him on Iron Man 3, so it was great to see him again. He’s similar to Colin but different, he’s straight-forward in what he wants and how he wants it done.

I was gonna say you did work with him on Iron Man 3. Was it one of these things where he called you guys and said, ‘Hey, I’m working on this movie, I’m thinking you might be right for the role’ or did he still make you audition, how did that go?

SIMPKINS: Well, I’m only in one scene so there was no audition and I didn’t have any lines. We were at a party at his house and he’s talking about this movie that he’s doing and he’s like, ‘Yeah it’s called The Nice Guys, it’s about these two guys who have to solve a murder mystery about a porn star’ and then he was like, ‘There’s actually a part in the beginning for someone like you, Ty’ and I was like, ‘Oh, that would be cool, that would be cool’ and then later he was like, ‘Yeah, I want you for this role’ and then a few months later we went to Atlanta to shoot part of the thing and then we went to LA to shoot the rest.

Going back in time a little bit making Iron Man 3, that movie was kind of popular, made a little money at the box office, a few people saw it, and you get to share screen with Robert Downey Jr. What was that like, do you still remember making it?

SIMPKINS: Yeah, I was going back and like, ‘I miss filming Iron Man, I wanna go back to Wilmington’ which is where we shot, Wilmington, NC, and it’s just a nice little town that I always want to go back there, I always want to go back to filming Iron Man, to see Robert almost every day and just be on Iron Man again. I loved Iron Man.

Ribbons wrote:That pool gag (one lands in the pool and the other goes splat) was super-gruesome. I love it and am horrified simultaneously.

Yes!!!!I cast this trailer on my TV for my first viewing. I figured it would have a ton of humor and the wife might enjoy it (the two leading males being the main reason). When it ended, I told her "This movie has absolutely zero redeeming qualities in it....." and she finished "....and you can't wait to see it."

Yup.

Achievement Unlocked: TOTAL DOMINATION (Win a Werewolf Game without losing a single player on your team)

Ribbons wrote:That pool gag (one lands in the pool and the other goes splat) was super-gruesome. I love it and am horrified simultaneously..

Same. This image constantly crops up in my mind since seeing. It's so superb. I love how Black thinks these knowing scenes up. Another parodying one I like is the "I can't cock my damn shotgun!" clip.

Ribbons wrote:I'm still not sold on Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling doing the Shane Black patter,

I think this is just the refreshing thing that these guys need. Crowe is becoming a forgotten studly bastard has been star and Gosling is tiresomely becoming the "Oooh he's so scary/cool quiet brooding guy' and ladies man actor, and this trailer shows a film that could show them as new, cool, guys. It looks like they're pulling this reinvention off here. Sure looks more effective than the "Oooh people hate me so maybe I'll go on Saturday Night Live" celeb attempt to be reborn.

By the way I only heard about a half of this trailer, as I was laughing out loud so much throughout this. I'm not watching this trailer again, as it sold me so much and was so funny that I don't wanna ruin the surprise of the humour of this film by becoming more familiar with it. It's pretty much my top 'must see' film at the moment.

EDIT. Oh, I just pop back onto Facebook to see Ryan Gosling has just done the SNL thing. You don't need that mate, just this movie.

Ribbons wrote:I'm still not sold on Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling doing the Shane Black patter,

I think this is just the refreshing thing that these guys need. Crowe is becoming a forgotten studly bastard has been star and Gosling is tiresomely becoming the "Oooh he's so scary/cool quiet brooding guy' and ladies man actor, and this trailer shows a film that could show them as new, cool, guys. It looks like they're pulling this reinvention off here. Sure looks more effective than the "Oooh people hate me so maybe I'll go on Saturday Night Live" celeb attempt to be reborn.

I hope so. Gosling seems alright, but it's almost that weird feeling you get whenever you see the new actor Woody Allen got to play Woody Allen. I can't really tell what I think of Crowe because he has very few lines in the trailer. I liked the bit of physical comedy here he's trying to pump the shotgun one-handed.

This movie was a blast. It doesn't re-invent the wheel or anything; if you've seen any Shane Black movie, you pretty much know what you're getting here. But it's still done well. Russell Crowe is a great tough guy and Ryan Gosling is a great unrepentant schmuck.

Capone wrote:Crowe and Gosling are perfectly paired, and I truly hope Black finds a way to team these two up together again in the near future, preferably as these characters. This is a film that rejects the idea of being polished and tidy, and I love it all the more for it. This is some of the best work we’ve seen from the people who made THE NICE GUYS, in front of and behind the cameras, and here’s hoping the trend continues.

ANTHONY BAGAROZZI: Our original draft of this wasn’t set in the ‘70s. It was more modern day. When you write a mystery story in modern day, it’s hard to create too much tension when people can be like, “Hey, I’ll just call and tell them they’re about to be killed and to get out of there.” Everybody has got a cell phone and everything is quick access. So, on one hand, we were like, “Oh, no, we can’t do any of that anymore.” But on the other hand, it was freeing that you were left without all of these encumbrances of constant communication and the internet. It was more fun to see how it worked in the pre-internet days.

Have you guys talked about doing a sequel?

BAGAROZZI: We don’t have a plan for a sequel, but when we talked about it, we were like, “You know, we could do something in the ‘80s.” We like the aesthetic of the ‘70s stuff, but the ‘80s stuff would be fun, too. I have no idea what it would be, but something in the ‘80s would be fun. And there could be an ‘80s soundtrack. The thing is, we’re going to get into the territory where Shane made movies in the ‘80s. He did Lethal Weapon, so we’d be knocking on the backdoor of that and I don’t know if he wants to revisit that.